1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention described herein pertain to the field of computer systems and software. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, one or more embodiments of the invention are directed to systems and methods for generating audience-specific documents via a multi-layered data model.
2. Description of the Related Art
In certain circumstances it is desirable to publish different versions of the same basic document. A catalog publisher may, for example, wish to make the same basic catalog available in different languages and/or create different versions of the catalog that take into account the different regional, regulatory, and cultural requirements of the audience for which the catalog is being published.
Although current systems provide the ability to publish a document in different languages, these existing systems lack the ability to easily publish different versions of the same document using a layered subset of data that is applied to the document in accordance with a set of document specific rules. Instead these existing systems make use of a template file to change the language upon which a document is based. One major drawback to the template approach is that it leads to duplicate data and requires users to switch between templates without giving the user the ability to globally view what underlying data is associated with each template. Duplicates arise when data that is common to numerous languages (e.g., product ID numbers or other numbers) is stored in a way that requires duplication for each language with which the data is associated. Some systems spread language and locale specific values across fields in each row instead of utilizing unique rows per language within a database, but this technique still leads to significant redundant data when two languages for example share almost all of the same words, e.g., US and UK versions of English.
Removing support for a given audience requires deleting rows or columns of the database when the database is structured as described above. Adding support for a new audience requires copying large amounts of data, either rows or columns and altering small amounts of data if the audience information is nearly the same or adding large amounts of information when the newly supported audience is a completely different language.
For at least the limitations described above there is a need for a system that implements a multi-layered data model in a way that makes it feasible to eliminate data duplication and maintain data integrity for audience-specific documents.